Florida Forecast '90 Outlook Governor Q&A

March 4, 1990|By John C. Van Gieson of The Sentinel Staff

THE ORLANDO SENTINEL: Governor, you have a number of commissions that are proposing some sort of tax or fee increases to resolve whatever problem it is they're looking at. Do you think it will be necessary to increase taxes?

GOV. BOB MARTINEZ: We're still gathering all that information. There are three task forces out there on health care. There's the one on water resources. There's Florida's Future Environment Commission. All those will be brought in, and we'll use those tools to work on next year's budget. But until we get the revenue estimate that we're going to use to put the budget together, and we start paring down some of the requests, it's hard to find out what really must be paid for because it's a priority. We're in the middle of that now.

Q: Are you ruling out tax increases? Should we read your lips?

A: No, what we're doing now is just taking the information. And it's just too early to say what it is that we'll be recommending in terms of the level of dollars of spending and areas that we will have the greatest emphasis on.

Q: How about the economy? Do you see Florida slowing down in the early 1990s, and what, if anything, will you do to deal with that?

A: One of the disappointments I've had is that the Department of Commerce's budget was cut back by the Florida Legislature. I think that's a budget that's very modest to start with. Commerce probably did a more extensive job than any other agency. When it got cut, that has an impact on how much you can get out in that market and how much you can sell Florida. I think that's something the state has seriously got to think about restoring.

I think the Florida economy remains healthy even with the Eastern Airlines shutdown, which is a major loss of jobs. As far as I can tell, the pipeline work that the Department of Commerce is engaged in truly remains as strong as it's always been. There's no doubt that construction and other things often are dependent on interest rates and on how people perceive the national economy, so to some degree we'll be dependent on the national economy. But I'm one of those who believes that it's spinning out. It periodically catches its breath, that's one thing, but fainting is another. I don't think the economy's fainting.

Q: So during your second term, assuming you are reelected this year, we might have a little bit of a stall or a slowdown, but the economy will continue to be strong?

A: I'm not forecasting we'll have a stall. There are parts of the nation that they're saying are going through this period. I don't basically believe that we're going into a recession period here. They've been predicting that so long that I guess one of them is bound to hit it right one of these days, but I'm very optimistic about it. I really am.

Q: On transportation, four times in the past year you've been unable to reach agreement with the Legislature on a program. Where do we go from here?

A: We'll be making recommendations with the budget, and I think the Florida Transportation Commission by law now has responsibility to develop a program for the governor's office and the Legislature, so we'll watch and see what they end up recommending, as well.

This special session last November that was not successful, there were three elements in it that were agreed to: fees, right-of-way acquisition, and I clearly had indicated I could live with between $825 million and $1.2 billion on the expressway program if we could just work out the differences between those parameters. So, you had three of the four issues that had been agreed to. It was that 4-cent gas-tax increase issue that didn't get agreed to, so like most legislative initiatives, you should compromise, and get what you can and not shut down the whole process for an element of it. I think, if in fact that agreement could not have been reached on the fourth one, that those three should have been allowed to go on.

Q: What are the prospects for doing it this coming spring?

A: Well, we're evaluating that. We're meeting with a lot of citizen groups and waiting for the formal recommendation of the transportation commission and see what direction they may be going. I know I still have business groups that talk about wanting to get at least those three elements passed, so we'll see what happens.

Q: Are we getting into a situation where transportation's becoming such a problem that, if action's not taken, it's going to start affecting business?